André Klein Dot Nethttp://andreklein.net
A Smörgåsbord of Prose & PoetrySun, 14 Jan 2018 07:41:16 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1andre_kleinhttps://feedburner.google.comMackie Onyx Blackjack Windows 10 Drivers Fixhttp://andreklein.net/onyx-blackjack-windows-10-drivers-fix/
Tue, 26 Sep 2017 19:01:13 +0000http://andreklein.net/?p=2409Continue reading →]]>The little Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface is a great little box with some nice 60db boutique-quality preamps. You’ll often find it mentioned in forums and blogs across the web, and especially since this article, many people have been interested in the Onyx Blackjack as a affordable solution to power their gain-hungry Shure SM7Bs (in conjunction with a Cloudlifter).

However, once you start looking at its Amazon reviews (and other forum entries) there are tons of angry reviews about the lack of driver support for Windows 8 and Windows 10. And indeed, a quick look a the official Onyx charts shows that driver support ended with Windows 7!

So, does this mean that the Onyx Blackjack is useless for for most modern machines? Not at all! You simply need to run the USB PC V3 driver setup in Compatibility Mode for Windows 7 (right click on setup file > Properties > Compatibility > Select Windows 7) I was skeptical at first, but after reading this post on Gearslutz (quoted below), I decided to give it a try and have since been using the Onyx Blackjack without problems in Windows 10, as an ASIO device, with minimal latency, just as intended.

“This has always been regarded as a high quality piece of hardware ruinously let down by atrocious Windows drivers. That reputation doesn’t seem to go away. That is a huge shame because they fixed it. Might’ve taken them years but if buying one today you’re good. IT EVEN WORKS UNDER WINDOWS 10, despite their stated support only to w7 or 8. As I understand it, Mackie have not paid MS to get their drivers digitally signed, but you just run it in compatibility mode for W7 and right click 2 .inf files.”

P.S.: For me it worked simply by running MackieSetup.exe in Compatibility Mode for Windows 7, no need for further manual .inf installs. This was on a Windows 10 Home, 64 BIT machine. Haven’t experienced any issues whatsoever.

ecently, I’ve been experimenting with various ways to speed up a server running WordPress which had gotten very sluggish, even after enabling and fine-tuning W3TC-Cache and putting it on Cloudflare. The first step was to upgrade the whole thing to PHP7 which is its own story, but (after updating some messily coded plugins) the whole thing already got quite a bit faster. Then I experimented with mod_pagespeed which is an amazing module in its own right (and deserves its own post), installed Memcached (yet another different story), but the real performance difference came into play with OpCache.

Since it took me a while to get it up and running and I couldn’t find much documentation for this specific scenario (PHP7, Easy Apache 4, CentOS) here are the key steps for massively speeding up your server running WordPress (or any PHP application for that matter).

Installing PHP Extensions Via Easy Apache 4

In WHM go to Home » Software » EasyApache 4 and click Customize

Go to PHP Extensions, search for “opcache” and enable it

Next, search for the PHP DSO handler by typing in “php70-php”. (I spent hours searching for “DSO” which didn’t bring up this result. I wish they’d rename that module so it can be found easier.)

fter playing around for a few days with Google Cardboard I definitely started to see the potential of phone-based VR but unfortunately the available games/apps on the Play Store were all rather short and restricted, seeming more like demos than full-blown VR experiences, so when I found that you can stream PC games in VR to your phone mode by using the simple yet smart Trinus Gyre software, I immediately tested it out with System Shock 2.

After downloading the Trinus Gyre client app for Android and the Windows server, the first thing I did was set up a USB tethering connection, since the default Wi-Fi connection left much to be desired in terms of stability and speed.

Another hurdle was that in order to stream 3D games from my laptop to Android with Trinus, they have to be running in windowed mode. After looking in vain for any in-game settings, I came up with the following solutions:

Running System Shock 2 in windowed mode

I’m using the GOG version of System Shock 2 and the easiest way to run it in windowed mode is to edit the cam_ext.cfg file in your main game folder and remove the semi-colon from line 43 before “force_windowed” so it reads as follows:

; force game to run in windowed mode
force_windowed

After uncommenting that line, System Shock now runs in windowed mode and is ready to be streamed in stereoscopic vision to your Android device.

Another solution to run System Shock 2 (or any game for that matter) in windowed mode is by using this little tool called DXWnd. Simply add the game to the list and run it through the tool.

Besides SS2, I’ve also managed to run Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Warband in windowed mode through DXWnd.

Setting up System Shock 2 for Streaming through Trinus Gyre VR

Since System Shock is a rather old game I managed to stream it in very high quality (see settings below) and still achieve decent FPS on a very mediocre laptop. Here are the settings I ended up with for a 5.5 inch device in a basic headset like this, ymmv.

First Impressions of playing System Shock 2 in Cardboard VR

System Shock 2 is an intense game even without the VR component. The haunted atmosphere, the suspenseful sound design and story makes for a lot of heart in your mouth moments. Actually being able to walk the dark corridors of the Von Braun spaceship in immersive VR ratches up the intensity factor to such a degree that when I heard the first Pipe Hybrid sneaking up on me from behind, I almost ripped the USB cable out of the headset.

marooned on the Von Braun in stereoscopic splendor

What’s that noise behind you?

The controls at first take some getting used to. I used the standard mouse+keyboard combo and found that the immersive effect is best when not using the mouse too much for looking around but relying as much as possible on the VR sensors while walking with WASD, although it is quite helpful to sometimes use the mouse to recenter the camera, lest your head snaps off your neck from all the frantic swiveling.

ot too long ago, before image macros and reaction videos roamed the planet, human beings created mix-tapes to express complicated feelings or share their favorite songs with family and friends. These custom compilations of songs were recorded on primitive storage media called “cassettes”, small plastic shells filled with two spools of magnetic thread constantly on the verge of getting entangled and jamming the playback device, in which case the cassette had to be carefully extracted from the mechanism, lengths of painstakingly prepared music spilling onto the floor like ugly brown tagliatelle, a scenario which could only be rectified by use of a hexagonally shaped pencil.

Nowadays our music lives in the cloud, gazillions of songs stored in ever-expanding rows within server farms across the world, managed and maintained by bots and over-caffeinated system administrators. We have access to almost every song ever written in human history and the only barrier between us and the totality of our sonic heritage is in our minds, i.e. we can only type things into the search field we’re already aware of.

This is why at the center of each streaming service like Spotify or Google Music there is a “recommendation engine”, a secret soup of algorithms constantly analyzing our listening habits and suggesting related artists, albums and playlists.

Before all of this, we used to discover music via the radio, television and most importantly, through our friends with whom we exchanged battered tapes and (more recently) compact discs hastily scrawled with black markers.

But let’s face it. Even the biggest music nerd’s record collection will pale in the face of what online streaming services have to offer. If you got a subscription and only listen to the same couple of albums over and over again, that’s fine, but you’re only accessing a minuscule slice of what you’re paying for. It’s like you’re renting a sprawling villa but never leave the tool shed. In a way, the catalog of a music streaming service is only as good as their discovery engine.

Besides, all major streaming services offer more or less the same catalog, geo-licensing shenanigans aside, so the only real difference is how good they are at enabling you to discover more great music. Pandora lets you create custom radio stations based on your taste profile, Google Play Music has a “I’m feeling lucky” button charged with the same raw computing power behind Google Search, but I often found both of these services to be a game of hit-and-miss.

One of the most interesting discovery mechanisms I’ve found so far is Spotify’s “Discover Weekly”, a custom playlist of 30 songs, generated fresh each Monday, like a personalized mix-tape. From what I could gather online, these playlists are generated by comparing your taste-profile to those of 75 million other users, searching for profiles similar to yours and then suggesting songs from these profiles which are not (yet) part of yours.

The accuracy of “Discover Weekly” playlists is uncanny sometimes, up to the point where it feels like somebody who really knows your taste in music sat down and put together 30 songs you’ve never heard before.

There’s a strong sense of déja vu at times, where I feel that I’ve heard these songs before, almost as if Spotify’s algorithms knew what future-me would be listening to next week by tapping into the collective unconscious of its user base.

If these playlists weren’t so damn good, it would almost be scary, because there’s a strong sense of human curation here. Sure, there are some outliers, where sometimes a track succession feels random or there’s the odd song which just doesn’t fit, but when it get its right, boy does it get it right!

Obviously, the more you’re using Spotify, adding songs, albums, following artists, digging down deeper into the catalog, the better these playlists are supposed to get. I’ve read that when you skip a song under the 30 second mark, Spotify will register that as a thumbs-down. Also, if a family member or significant other uses your account to go on a romp of listening to stuff that’s completely different than your usual tastes, Spotify is apparently smart enough to detect that and not let it influence these weekly playlists.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that while I don’t necessary find all of the 30 songs equally great, Spotify’s algorithms sometimes seem to have a great sense of pacing where the sequence really fits, i.e. the mood of one track gets picked up by the next, evolves into something else, gets contrasted and then comes full circle.

What really goes on under the hood of “Discover Weekly”, we’ll probably never find out, but more and more often I find myself looking forward to Mondays with a strange sense of anticipation, wondering what the bots will have cooked up next.

What does it mean when algorithms are getting just as good or even better at music discovery than our networks of friends? Are we one step further towards Skynet becoming self-aware? Or are we perhaps more predictable in our preferences than we’d like to admit? Being able to automatically suggest things to people that they didn’t even know they were looking for is the Holy Grail of (online) marketing. For quite a while these mechanisms have been very primitive, but they’re slowly getting better. Eventually, Facebook might be able to predict who you’ll friend next, Amazon will automatically fill your shopping cart with highly personal Christmas gifts, and Google will show us the right search results without having to enter a single word.

It’s a brave new world in the making, questions of privacy, surveillance and morality will become more and more important. Sure, there will be pitfalls and failures along the way, but while all of this is unfolding, at least we’ll have the perfect soundtrack.

hile working on the latest two book and audio releases, I rediscovered the fun of playing old Super Nintendo games during downtime, the simple joy of quickly firing up Super Mario World in an emulator, stomping a few Goombas, flying high through pixelated skies, before going back to the grueling routine of editing, formatting, compiling vocabulary lists and whatnot.

But it was only so long before I realized that playing these classics on a keyboard didn’t just feel awkward, but it also made the gameplay so much harder — especially in games that are all about timing, getting that jump-off point just right and stopping and turning on a dime. So I started browsing the web for a reasonably priced, simple controller that would let me sit back and enjoy these oldies the way they were meant to be be played.

The 8bitdo SFC30 immediately struck my fancy because it’s a very faithful reproduction of the time-tested world-famous Nintendo controller that molded my generation’s juvenile hands. Not only does it feel and function exactly like the original (bigger paws notwithstanding), it’s improved with bluetooth and a variety of different modes, so that it can be used on almost any device or platform.

It comes in a nicely packaged box with a mini-USB cable (for charging and direct connection), a little prop-up stand, and a key holder that celebrates 30 years of “Famicom”, the Japanese version of the NES. Apropos geographical differences, the European version of the SNES shares the exact same casing and controller design with the original Japanese “Super Famicom”, whereas the US version is slightly different (see Wiki for a comparison), so if you’re looking for an exact replica of the original US gamepad, check out the SNES30 by 8bitdo.

First Tests of the 8bit SFC30 Bluetooth Controller

During the holidays my sisters, brother-in-law and I put this thing to the test, playing some old classics on the MeSNEmu emulator for iOS (no jailbreak required) and rediscovering the mind-bending genius of Braid on PC, which is so much better with a controller. We even used the SFC30 to play through a bit of the Grim Fandango Remastered edition on the big screen, whose “tank controls” really lend themselves to gamepad control. Before we knew it, we had sunk a couple of hours into it, and quite frankly, I’m surprised by the build quality and how well this piece of plastic holds up even to intense button-mashing sessions (haven’t thrown it across the room yet, but been close a couple of times … darn those blinking Koopa shells!)

Apart from functioning as a standard bluetooth controller or plugged-in via USB cable, the SFC30 can also be used in “touch emulation” mode, which allows you to map on-screen touch controls to physical buttons — a great feature to experience mobile favorites in a new way! More about this further down.

So if you’re looking for a simple controller to revel in pixel-nostalgia and control almost any application on Android, iOS, PC or Mac, I can’t recommend the SFC30 highly enough. Needless to say, being modeled after a piece of tech which is more than two decades old, it has no analog stick, gyros or fancy special buttons, but I actually like the simplicity. Plus, it’s a lot of fun to get it to talk to different systems and I’m still looking forward to hook it up to a music app and use it as a simplistic MIDI controller via keyboard-mapping. “Kick punch, it’s all in the mind …” You could probably even use it to control your Powerpoint presentation, if that’s how you roll. On second thought, don’t! Powerpoint is the scourge of mankind.

Sidenotes:

In order to use this (or any controller for that matter) on PC games with no official gamepad suppport, the “Joy2Key” program is a great tool to map buttons on your controllers to keys on your keyboard. To make it work with the SFC30, just set the gamepad to Joystick Mode (Mode 2), by pressing Start + C.

If you want to use the touch emulation mode on iOS, the device needs to be jailbroken and used with the 8bitdo app which has since mysteriously disappeared from Cydia, assumably due to legal issues, but by following the instructions from here, I was able to get it to work nevertheless. Here’s the process in a nutshell:

This has been a great year for music, and while all the big music magazines and blog are publishing their “best of 2015” lists, I’d also like to share my favorite records of this year, not just strict new releases, but all the albums which I kept returning to over and over again.

Midlake – Bamnan & Slivercork

The first Midlake album I ever listened to was their 2013 release “Antiphon”. Immediately taken by the sound and instrumentation, I went back through their previous releases and soon found myself hitting repeat on “The Courage of Others”, “The Trials of Van Occupanther”, finding “Antiphon” almost bland in comparison (only later did I realize that during the production of “Antiphon”, band-leader and vocalist Tim Smith had left the band, who apparently had been responsible for a lot of the songwriting). And while “The Courage of Others” or “Trials of Van Occupanther” could just as easily find their place on this list, I picked Midlakes’ first album “Bamnan & Slivercork” from 2004 here, because it’s simply their most fun record, whether it’s the lyrics in tracks like “King Fish Pies” or the analog synth in “He Tried To Escape”.

Favorite Track: King Fish Pies

The particle separation room / is made without windows / They say it’s because someone might break in / and take whatever they chose

Ultimate Paining – Ultimate Paining

This is the first album by UK duo Jack Cooper (Mazes) and James Hoare (Veronica Falls), released in 2014. And although their new 2015 album “Green Lanes” is arguably just as good, I still found myself coming back to this first record full of wiry guitars, catchy melodies and simply great songwriting. It’s a very stripped down sound, almost bedroom production style and while reminiscent of a lot of influences, the simplicity of it all is surprisingly refreshing.

Favorite Track: Riverside

I don’t need those things you do / leave them all behind for good / at the riverside, waters running high / over our heads

Sister Crayon – Devoted

I first stumbled upon Sister Crayon when I heard that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta/At the Drive-In) produced and co-wrote their 2015 album “Devoted”. Instantly I became hooked on this unique blend of electronic RnB beats, analog basslines, wide pads and the great voice of Terra Lopez. While their more intense tracks are great, in my opinion Sister Crayon are at their best in more toned down arrangements like “Hell in My Head” or “To Show You Violence”. I wish more pop music would sound like Sister Crayon.

Favorite Track: To Show You Violence

I’m tired of thinking about you / there is no need for you to tell me / nothing I don’t already know

Other Lives – Rituals

If I had to pick my all time favorite record of 2015 this would probably be it. I’ve already written about it here. Can’t wait for the next album.

Favorite Track: 2 Pyramids

I see the skeleton jump from the skin / I feel this red weather’s coming in / now all my elements to be undone / to become one

Chelsea Wolfe – Abyss

I first found out about Chelsea Wolfe with her 2011 release “Apokalypsis” and I had never heard music before that sounded so deeply haunted and beautiful at the same time. I don’t think there’s another artist in the known universe who knows how to build these complex and utterly creepy sonic landscapes by layering distorted guitars, synthesizers and other terrifying sounds on top of one another in this very melodious way, creating these pitch-black valleys of sound, her voice leading through it all like Ariadne’s thread through the Minotaur’s labyrinth. “Abyss” may be her darkest, biggest and most ambitious release yet. There’s a lot of electronic beats, weird sounds and strange synths here, all slathered in copious amounts of reverb, delay and distortion, but in the end what makes this album so great is that it still feels like solid rock record.

I know that you’re waiting / ready to run / chasing the sun / I can’t wake up / scream and run

Teen Daze – Morning World

Teen Daze is a name that’s usually associated with a kind of ethereal electronic chill-wave sound, so “Morning World” is more than a little surprising, essentially being more of a folk than an electronic music album with its strumming guitars, meandering chord-progressions and acoustic drums. The arrangements are simple and catchy, yet enriched with the kind of warm synth pads and other electronic Teen Daze finesse. I like the simplicity of the song-writing on “Morning World” which has an overall very positive and uplifting mood but is still somewhat introspective.

Favorite Track: It starts at the water

we can see past the trees / yet they go on forever / I want to believe / this is forever

Howard – Religion

If I had to pick a second all-time favorite of 2015, this would be it. This first album by Brooklyn band around Howard Feibusch is sometimes reminiscent of Radiohead and Other Lives in terms of atmosphere, arrangement and instrumentation, but still they carve out their very own signature sound. “Religion” is a great album full of warm guitars, wide-open textures and complex polyrhythms, and I can’t wait to hear more from them.

Favorite Track: Money Can’t Buy

I stare down on the clothing money can’t buy / the ancient wheels keep turning / gettin’ out of my life

Kate Tempest – Everybody Down

If you haven’t heard about this ambitious 2014 project by Kate Tempest yet, do yourself a favor and listen to it now. “Everybody Down” is a spoken word/rap album that breaks with many expectation and affectations of the genre, presenting itself as a complete story stretching over 12 intense tracks, a novel-like narrative about drugs, romance and crime from the streets of London. And if the story itself wasn’t enough to make this an absolutely riveting release, the underlying beats, basslines and general sound of “Everybody Down” are steeped in a general electronic grittiness that is somewhat reminiscent of early UK scene culture but still sounds completely fresh.

Favorite Track: Lonely Daze

It’s true if you believe it / the world is the world but it’s all how you see it / one man’s flash of lightning ripping through the air / is another’s passing glare, its hardly there

Connan Mockasin – Forever Dolpin Love

This 2011 release by New Zealander Connan Mockasin is one of the weirdest and most charming records I’ve been listening to repeatedly this year. “Forever Dolphin Love” is a strange journey through a land of submerged enchantedness, warbling guitars, bewildering high-pitched vocals, witty lyrics and bubbly melodies.

Favorite Track: It’s Choade My Dear

I’m a China toad / but I’m in filing mode / please take it off / please take it off

“He’s absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was: I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes (…they are all paragraphs: he seldom writes a single sentence…) goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after it stops. It’s not built in the rhythm of ordinary prose, but on something existing only in his head, and as he can never say what it is he wants to say, all his things end in a kind of hunger, a suggestion of something he can’t say or do or think.”

]]>How To Force Microsoft OneDrive To Sync More Oftenhttp://andreklein.net/how-to-force-microsoft-onedrive-to-sync/
http://andreklein.net/how-to-force-microsoft-onedrive-to-sync/#respondTue, 02 Jun 2015 14:43:51 +0000http://andreklein.net/?p=1691Continue reading →]]>I use a number of different cloud storage services for different purposes, because they each have certain advantages and disadvantages. What I like about Microsoft OneDrive is that it has a relatively small memory footprint and doesn’t bog down the system like other cloud storage clients that constantly run in the background.

Cloud Storage Provider

Memory Usage*

BoxSync

107.964K

Dropbox

89.120K

OneDrive

2.860K

*measured while uploading

However, one problem that I’ve found with OneDrive is that it’s sometimes really slow to sync. Let’s say I work on a document on my laptop, then a few minutes later move to the sofa and try to pull up the file on the tablet … no luck, because OneDrive seems to sync files only once in a millenium.

I looked for a “sync now” button everywhere but came up empty. Scouring official forums, there were many people who had the same question but only canned answers.

Sometimes, even after a few hours or days (without reboot), OneDrive still hadn’t noticed and synced my changes. And what’s the use of a cloud storage system that is always days behind?

Have You Tried Turning it Off and On Again?

Now … it turns out that if you quickly close the client (or kill the process), and then restart it again, OneDrive wakes from its slumber, starts analyzing the changes and begins to sync!

So now, whenever I want to make sure that OneDrive syncs my changes before I move to a different device, I simply need to kill and restart the client. Here’s a simple batch script to automate that process:

Just (adapt and) paste this code into Notepad, save it as sync.bat or something and then, whenever you want to give OneDrive a whack on the head gentle reminder to sync your files, running the script will kill and restart the process for you.

On top of that you can also use Task Manager to run this script once per day or something.

The only downside that I’ve found with this is that once OneDrive restarts it pops up an explorer window of the folder, which is a minor annoyance, yet it still would be preferable not to require another action (close folder).

UPDATE: I’ve updated the above script so that no windows pop up anymore. Thanks Samuel for the hint about “/background” which I hadn’t been aware of.

It’s not perfect, but until Microsoft inserts a “sync now” button or just makes the syncing process more real-time, it’s better than nothing.

UPDATE: Apparently, there is a native manual sync option after all, but only in the Windows 8 OneDrive app, not in the Windows 7 client. Read more here. Thanks Joe for the tip-off.

UPDATE: Another interesting way to force OneDrive to sync without closing the client just reached me via email. Thanks Rudi! Here’s how it works: Drop a simple text file in your OneDrive folder. Now, whenever you make a change to that file, i.e. edit and save it, OneDrive will sync all your files.

Curiously though, this only works when the text file is in the main OneDrive folder. I tried updating a text file on my desktop (which is included via Symbolic Link in my OneDrive folder) and that didn’t do the trick.

How To Force OneDrive To Sync When Your Computer Wakes Up

For the past couple of months I’ve been using Windows Task Scheduler to start the above script once per day. However, I still sometimes found myself missing newly updated files when the changes were made before or after the scheduled time. Since I’m working on a laptop most of the time and my working sessions are started and ended with opening and closing the lid, I started looking for a way to run the above script whenever I open my computer. Here’s how it works.

Start Windows Task Scheduler

Create a New Task

Under Triggers, Click “New”

Select “On an event” from the “Begin the task” dropdown menu. Then select “Custom” and click on “New Event Filter”.

Now, under “Actions” simply configure your task to run the batch script I’ve talked about in the beginning of the post and you’re good to go. Your computer will now force OneDrive to sync whenever it wakes up.

]]>http://andreklein.net/how-to-force-microsoft-onedrive-to-sync/feed/0Creatures of Ritualhttp://andreklein.net/creatures-of-ritual/
http://andreklein.net/creatures-of-ritual/#commentsThu, 14 May 2015 08:09:51 +0000http://andreklein.net/?p=1673Continue reading →]]>This is the last song and title-track of the new album Rituals by Other Lives, which has been one of the most satisfying new releases this year. I’ve been listening to it almost daily since it came out on May 5th, at home or on the go, and just can’t seem to get tired of it. It’s music that plays out like a movie, slowly intertwining scenes and after-images of something always out of grasp, and yet so strangely familiar.

To engage with Rituals is to barrel along a winding, hidden dirt path; peering into its bounty is to be swept away into the pines and deep, briny brush revealing a new, almost utopian existence. […] Ambient soundscapes (“New Fog”) buttress against prog-rock stomp (“2 Pyramids”) lending the album the experience of embarking on a choose-your-own-adventure novel. – otherlives.com

Update: this live concert is a great showcase of this band’s multi-instrumental genius: